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On Purpose with Jay Shetty

Emma Grede: #1 Trick Successful People Use Every Day (THIS Will Open Doors You Didn’t Know Existed!)

48 min episode · 2 min read
·
Emma Grede

Episode

48 min

Read time

2 min

Topics

Career Growth, Productivity, Startups

AI-Generated Summary

Key Takeaways

  • Career acceleration phrase: Saying "I'll do that" with your hand up consistently opens opportunities you wouldn't otherwise receive. This willingness to volunteer before feeling fully qualified creates momentum and demonstrates capability, leading to exponential growth in responsibility and recognition over time.
  • Excellence as strategy: Master whatever role you currently occupy, even if it's not your dream job. Being exceptional at making sandwiches translates to being exceptional at designing jeans. This magnetic quality of excellence makes people want to invest in your potential and creates pathways to better opportunities.
  • Focus over passion: Identify what you're naturally good at rather than chasing passion. Competence builds confidence, while passion alone falters when challenges arise. Going deep on one skill creates force multiplier effects in business and life, unlocking opportunities that scattered attention never reveals.
  • Test immediately, not perfectly: Scale down big ideas to test them tomorrow rather than waiting for perfect conditions or major funding. Start a YouTube version before pitching Netflix. Iterate based on real feedback from small experiments rather than perfecting presentations that may never get heard by decision-makers.

What It Covers

Emma Grede, co-founder of Good American and SKIMS, discusses building confidence through competence, the power of saying "I'll do that," eliminating self-imposed limitations, defining personal standards versus societal expectations, and testing business ideas immediately rather than waiting for perfect conditions.

Key Questions Answered

  • Career acceleration phrase: Saying "I'll do that" with your hand up consistently opens opportunities you wouldn't otherwise receive. This willingness to volunteer before feeling fully qualified creates momentum and demonstrates capability, leading to exponential growth in responsibility and recognition over time.
  • Excellence as strategy: Master whatever role you currently occupy, even if it's not your dream job. Being exceptional at making sandwiches translates to being exceptional at designing jeans. This magnetic quality of excellence makes people want to invest in your potential and creates pathways to better opportunities.
  • Focus over passion: Identify what you're naturally good at rather than chasing passion. Competence builds confidence, while passion alone falters when challenges arise. Going deep on one skill creates force multiplier effects in business and life, unlocking opportunities that scattered attention never reveals.
  • Test immediately, not perfectly: Scale down big ideas to test them tomorrow rather than waiting for perfect conditions or major funding. Start a YouTube version before pitching Netflix. Iterate based on real feedback from small experiments rather than perfecting presentations that may never get heard by decision-makers.

Notable Moment

Grede reveals she stopped apologizing to her children for working after realizing her constant apologies created a false narrative that she disliked her career. Now she openly tells her kids she loves work, travels, and time with friends, teaching them to pursue dreams unashamedly.

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Episode Transcript

This is a iHeart podcast, guaranteed human. This message is brought to you by Apple Card. Apple Card members can earn unlimited daily cash back on everyday purchases wherever they shop. This means you could be earning daily cash on just about anything, like a slice of pizza from your local pizza place or a latte from the corner coffee shop. Apply for Apple Card in the Wallet app to see your credit limit offer in minutes. Subject to credit approval, Apple Card issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City branch. Terms and more at applecard.com. Hi, friends. Sophia Bush here, host of Work in Progress. This week, we had such a special guest, a mentor, a friend, a wife, a mother, an author, attorney, advocate, television producer, and now she adds podcast host to the list. Michelle Obama is here. Sofia, I'm beyond thrilled to be able to sit down and chat with you. Listen to Work in Progress on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Open your free iHeartRadio app, search Work in Progress, and listen now. Hi. I'm Radi Davluca, and I am the host of A Really Good Cry podcast. This week, I am joined by Anna Runkle, also known as the crappy childhood fairy, a creator, teacher, and guide helping people heal from the lasting emotional wounds of unsafe or chaotic childhoods. But talking about trauma isn't always great for people. It's not always the best thing. About a third of people who are traumatized as kids feel worse when they talk about it, get very dysregulated. Listen to a really good cry on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. I am so excited to be here tonight at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco with the one and only, Emma Greed. Emma, I could just keep saying your name. It's just like, you are first of all, I wanna say you're one of my dear friends. I adore you. I love you. I think you're incredible. Oh, thank you, darling. And the fact that you came out here to do this means the absolute world to me. And you heard the excitement and the energy in the room. And yeah. Honestly, Jay, until about three hours ago, I thought it was 800 people that were here tonight. So I'm in a little bit of shock, to be totally honest. I'm like, what? I love it. It's definitely, like, thousands and thousands of people back. Yes. Yes. I wanna start with something that we've been talking about this evening, and it's interesting because you're actually talking about it in the clip that we had from the show when you were on the podcast. We find that we spend so much of our times worrying about what people think of us. We are constantly our worst critics in our mind. We're thinking, oh, does this person think I'm this, think I'm that? I want you to take …

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